You can talk to more and more of your tech gadgets today, whether it’s your phone or your watch or your car or your TV or … you get the point. For the Google app, that includes things like calling, texting, setting reminders, and for a lot of you, setting your alarm. 

Once you’re up at 7 am, you’ve got a lot of time to do even more. So, here are a few of our favorite new ways (some are hot off the press in just the past few weeks) to get help from Google by just speaking.
1.  Turn on the tunes. 

Whether you’re the DJ at the holiday party or just chilling by the fireside, Google can help. Ask to play music from a specific artist, for your general mood (“party music”), or for the activity you’re doing and you’ll be taken to a curated playlist on Google Play Music. Or, if you want Google to play music from another music app, just specify where (“on Spotify”). 

2.  Switch off. You can still ask Google to get things done for you while offline.

You can still ask Google to do things for you when you’re offline – or just having a bad (connection) day. Play music, turn up the volume, open apps, dim the screen, or switch Bluetooth and airplane mode on and off. 

3.  Ask Google to find and play videos on YouTube.

When you’re in the YouTube app and enable Google to recognize when you say “Ok Google” from any screen, you can use voice actions to find what you need, pick out the video you want from a list, skip and more — all hands-free.

4.  Book your holiday flights.

The holidays have crept up on you and you haven’t nailed down your plans yet? Ask Google to show you flights, destinations, and prices; then finish the booking on your preferred website. And don’t be shy — ask Google follow-up questions to compare flights on different days and different times of day.  Find a nonstop business class flight or one that connects through a  specific airport. 

5. Get things done in other apps. 

Voice actions don’t just work within Google’s apps — we’ve worked with a handful of partners this year to create custom ways for you to command some popular apps. For example, ask Google to “Shazam this song,” “Log 400 calories for lunch on Lose It,” or even “Find a hotel on Orbitz.” Hungry for more? Get some inspiration here.  

6. Get cooking.

Let’s face it: tapping and typing doesn’t work when your hands are covered in flour or pasta sauce. Try asking Google to find you that recipe you’re looking for by voice, so you can finish off your delicious frittata -- without covering your phone in egg yolk.

7. Be vague. Speak human. 

We all make mistakes, Google included. If the Google app transcribes something you said incorrectly, say so! You can either spell the correction out, as in, “no I meant W-A-L-E-S”, or suggest a word be replaced entirely: “what about dolphins?”. Talk to the Google app as naturally as you would if it were human -- it’s designed to understand conversation that way.

We’re not done building out voice features just yet! If you’re ever curious to learn more tricks, just take a look here to learn about everything you can ask the Google app. 

Posted by Steve Cheng, Director of Product Management

In October, we announced the launch of the Accelerated Mobile Pages project, an open source initiative which aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web. We know that on the web speed is critical and research shows that 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Speed is something Google understands at its core and with Google Search, our focus has always been on getting people the right answers to their questions as quickly as possible.

For the past few months we’ve been running a public experiment at g.co/ampdemo to demonstrate how AMP pages work in Google search results on a mobile device. During this experiment, we’ve seen tremendous excitement and engagement from the publishing community and are excited to announce that AMP pages will be coming to search for everyone as soon as late February.



Since this is the open web, all you need to get started is to create your first AMP page.
Content you publish to your sites today will be eligible to show up in the demo now, and soon in Google search. We encourage publishers to get started today to be ready.

The AMP project is working to make the mobile web experience better for everyone, and it is thrilling to be part of this industry-wide effort to reshape how content is consumed online.

Posted by David Besbris Vice President, Engineering Search

Wondering if your favorite singer is playing near you? Or looking for some new music suggestions? Or maybe you’re watching a TV show and can’t remember where you’ve seen that actor before? No matter what music, actors, movies or shows you love, our new update will keep you in the know.

Starting today on your Android phone and tablet (and coming soon to iOS), song recommendations, lyrics, covers and much more are just a tap away.
And for TV shows and movies, it’s easier to explore past and upcoming episodes, get a recommendation on what to watch next, check out the cast and find showtimes near you.

Happy listening, watching and discovering!

Posted by Satyajeet Salgar, Product Manager